ovidence
which especially occupied itself about all he personally undertook.
The rascality of Saturday was entirely forgotten on Sunday, when, with
bowed head, he recited his metaphysical creed or received the parting
blessing. The Sunday service, the surpliced choir, those melting
hymns, the roll of the organ's mysterious tones throughout the holy
edifice, the peculiar sense of spiritual well-being and prosperity
which it all combined to produce was probably a joy of his life, and by
no means the meanest. The mischief was that he had no moral sense, and
the word honesty and duty connoted nothing real to his mis-shapen mind.
He was a morally deficient being.

Now, the ethical Church has come for this great purpose, to make us see
the repulsiveness of a religion of that kind, to assure every man that
no religious services, any more than the eager subscription of
antiquated formularies, constitute the essence of religion. That is
built on the moral law, and unless it come as the crown and glory of a
life of duty, then that religion is a shameful thing, the sacrilegious
degradation of the highest and holiest thing on earth. It has come,
this ethical Church, to reinforce the wholly forgotten teaching of the
Hebrew prophets of the utter emptiness of all religion devoid of moral
life, the vanity of sacrifices, oblations and rites, the hollowness of
formularies, creeds and confessions, the indispensable necessity of an
ethical basis for all religious belief and practice. "What more," asks
Micah, "doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?"

It has come also to indicate the true relations between ethics and
religion. Ethics are truly the basis on which religion is built, but
when once the sacred edifice is fully raised, a beautiful reaction is
set up (at least in the ideal good life), and religion becomes one of
the strongest incentives to a dutiful and virtuous life. This is the
explanation of the truly ideal lives lived by men and women of deep
personal religion, in all sects and creeds, European and Asiatic.
This, too, is the justification of that oft-repeated and profoundly
true saying, that all good men and women belong to the same religion.
It is to that one true, pure, and aboriginal religion we wish to get
back, in which we discover the best ally of morality, the all-powerful
incentive to a life wholly devoted to duty and the service of the human
brotherhood.